Chapter 18 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
The loud slam of the door behind me bounces off the walls of my family’s estate.
My blood is still sizzling from my confrontation with Valeria.
It lasted too long and tested every ounce of my patience.
I stood my ground, though. I told her unequivocally that she either pulls into line or removes herself from the lineup entirely.
I’m tired of her deception and manipulation.
Compromise is no longer an option. What she damaged cannot be fixed, and frankly, I don’t want to fix it.
Her sniveling defense replays in my mind as I stride through the halls with my fists clenched at my sides. I loathe that no amount of wishful thinking will allow me to resolve this dilemma with my gun. But more than anything, I hate that she tried to use my brother’s loyalties against me.
She wove her story so tightly around Valentina that even Dante started to doubt her.
I smelled the controversy on his skin when he reminded me how the “Surprise! You’re a father!” ruse knocked him on his ass. But this is different. Valentina isn’t Anna. She wouldn’t play me like that.
I get he wants to caution me about not making the same mistake, but it’s too late for that.
I’m already in too deep. I’m obsessed with Valentina—snowed under by a force too great for mankind to budge.
It’s savage. The hunger I have for her won’t let me rest, and the need grew tenfold after having her beneath me.
Leaving Valentina to settle into my room alone was the last thing I wanted to do. It felt like I was abandoning her to the wolves. But I couldn’t risk Valeria getting to my father first and feeding him the same lies she told my brothers.
She’s painting Valentina as the villain, and until I told my brother with utmost certainty that I won’t tolerate a bad word spoken about Valentina, everyone had believed her lies.
Stories root fast in this family, and it’s virtually impossible to dig them out once they’re planted, but I gave it my best shot. I’ve spent hours adjusting Valentina’s ledger from bad to good, and for months, I’ll have no clue if it’s paid off.
When I reach my suite, I find the door locked. My initial annoyance fades when I realize Valentina most likely locked it for privacy. After slipping a key out of my pocket, I quietly unlock the door and enter my room. The space is dimly lit, and the scent of Valentina’s perfume tinges the air.
My heart strums my ribs when I find Valentina curled up in a wingback chair near the fireplace. Her knees are tucked under her chin, and her cheek is resting on her open hand.
This could be my cockiness speaking, but it’s as if she didn’t want to sleep in my bed without me.
The thought turns my cock to stone.
I cross the room in three lengthy strides. When I lift her gently, careful not to wake her, she murmurs my name but doesn’t wake.
I carry her to the bed, bombarded with previously unventured emotions. I’m relieved that she’s here, in my space, and not lost to Valeria’s schemes. But I also feel guilty for letting family politics take precedence over her comfort.
Additionally, there’s that fierce, possessive longing that borders on obsessive.
I want her close, always, and for her to know she’s mine.
After laying her down, I remove her shoes and tuck her in, unconcerned that she hasn’t showered. I love that she still smells like me. It’s a selfish comfort that reminds me our connection is unique and unbreakable.
As I brush a stray lock of hair from Valentina’s cheek, she sighs and sinks further into the pillow.
Without shame, I watch her so closely that I can count the thuds of her pulse in her neck.
I’m captivated by how peaceful she looks in my realm.
It’s as if she knows I’ll keep her safe.
This feeling isn’t new to me, but it’s usually reserved for my brothers and our father.
I’ve spent years building walls so I can keep everyone at arm’s length, but with Valentina, those defenses crumble. I’ll be the man she can rely on and the one who never lets her down, because I’d rather take an axe to my cock than disappoint her.
After a prolonged stalk, I lock the entry doors of my room and office with the master key, then enter the bathroom. I’m reluctant to wash Valentina’s scent off my skin, but if I don’t ease the throbbing in my balls, I’ll take her in her sleep.
Since I’m meant to be showing her a new side of me, not displaying the tendencies of a rapist with no morals, a quick self-release in the shower will have to do.
I strip fast before letting the hot water take care of some of the tension in my shoulders. It does little to ease the ache in my cock, so before I’ve even loaded my hand up with suds, I curl it around my shaft and give it a handful of tugs.
As I stroke my cock in rhythm to my frantic pulse, I picture Valentina’s dark locks sprawled against the earthy green ground, and her face glowing with ecstasy. I stroke myself harder as I remember how her pussy was on display for everyone to see, yet I experienced no worry about her being exposed.
The guards aren’t brave enough to look in the Carusos’s direction in general, but when we enter the orchards, they turn a blind eye to everything. Drugs. Guns. The woman who’s taken me back to my youth, where it’s essential to come three times a day to function anywhere close to normal.
With my eyes closed, I do everything not to come on the fucking spot.
That’s what Valentina’s sultry curves and beautiful face do to me. I could come just recalling the charge that zapped through me when she spun my way for the first time.
I stroke my cock faster.
It feels good, though it has nothing on how it felt when Valentina wrapped her lips around the crown and sucked down, or the way her pussy pulsated both in pain and euphoria when I pushed in a little impatiently.
Sweat breaks across my forehead as I recall the sucks of her pussy when I rode her bare. They’re similar to the greedy sucks of her mouth when she gave me the best blow job of my life.
My skin is on fire now, and my lungs saw in and out, desperate for air. I stroke my cock cruelly while flaring my nostrils, hopeful to catch a portion of Valentina’s seductive scent in the air.
I need only the quickest whiff and this show will be over before it’s truly started.
When I flatten my hand to the tiles above my head, needing something to stabilize my sways, my cock rages. I can smell Valentina’s arousal on my hand. It’s sweet and a little musky, a perfectly enticing palette for an obsessed man.
After lifting my hand to my nose, I work my cock faster. I pump it in and out of my fist on repeat, squeezing the base with every stroke.
My release builds when I picture Valentina on her knees and peering up at me as I stuff my cock deep inside her mouth.
Dipping my knees, I rock my hips back and forth. My grunts are unlike anything I’ve ever heard when the tension bundled in my balls spills over my fist.
My cock jerks as streams of cum erupt from the crown. It coats the tiled wall in front of me and drips off my engorged knob.
My release is rapid and powerful but unsatisfying.
It isn’t enough.
Confident I know why, I rinse my cum down the drain, step out of the shower, and then sling a towel around my waist. When I return to the bedroom, my eyes lock on my target with military precision. Then a knock sounds at the door.
I grit my teeth before cursing karma to hell. It knew my intentions were bad and stepped in before I could make a mistake.
Considering the hour, I expect trouble, so I dress in a pair of jeans and a shirt before answering the door. Dante is on the other side, dangling Valentina’s backpack off his index finger. Somehow, he looks older than he did this morning.
Still pissed he trusted the word of a woman like Valeria over my intuition, which has contributed greatly to our family’s mammoth wealth, I snatch Valentina’s bag out of his grasp.
While baring teeth, I attempt to slam the door in his face. Dante shoves his foot in the way, foiling my wordless request for him to fuck off.
I almost tell him with my fists until he confesses, “I shouldn’t have taken what happened to me out on anyone else.” He lifts his head, but his eyes don’t quite meet mine. “I let Valeria twist things, and I doubted you. Both of you.”
When he attempts to peer past my shoulder, I block his view with my body.
He doesn’t get to apologize to Valentina until I say so.
“Sorry doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t undo the way you looked at her in the orchard and how you treated her as if she were lesser than you.”
He looks me in the eye, his gaze steady for once. “No, it doesn’t. But I’m trying, Vanni. That has to count for something.” I scoff, but he acts as if I didn’t react at all. “I know what it’s like to have your life turned upside down by a lie—”
“Then you should have known better than anyone not to jump to conclusions.” Especially when those conclusions have you so concerned you interrupt the best sex I’ve ever had.
Dante nods without hesitation as remorse sparks in his lowered gaze. “I know. You’re right. I’ll talk to the others and set the record straight.”
As I return his stare, I look for signs of the man who once had my back no matter what.
He’s there. He’s just swamped with too many secrets to fully break free.
The past couple of months have been hard on him, and I’ve not been as supportive as I should have been the past six weeks, because I’ve had other matters on my mind.
By matters, I mean locating Valentina.
The remembrance sees me offering rare leniency. “See that you do.”
I curse under my breath when those four simple words have him believing he’s off the hook. With a grin I’ve not seen him wear in weeks, he steps into my room, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and draws me into his chest as if I’m his younger brother.
“Get the fuck off me,” I growl into his ear when he takes a long sniff of my hair.
I smell like cum, and normally I wouldn’t care, but because Valentina’s juices are part of the scent, I do today.
I itch to beat into him for more than a perverted mind when he heads down the hallway while saying, “Charge her phone. Her battery’s flatter than Valeria’s tits the first time she pranced around you in a bikini.”
He says his suggestion as if it’s a peace offering, but I know what it really means.
He’s a snooping piece of shit.
Valentina stored her phone in a secret compartment in her backpack. He wouldn’t know that unless he riffled through her belongings like I did when Dr. Di Petro checked her vitals after Valeria drugged her.
“Just looking out for you like you always do us, Vanni,” Dante says from the safety of the stairwell.
He’s smarter than he looks.
I may have pushed him over the landing if he were still in front of me.
After slamming my door shut, giving it extra oomph for leverage, I plug Valentina’s phone into a charger on the bedside table. A photo featuring Valentina and a woman, presumably her mother, brightens the screen. She looks a lot like Valentina, but twenty years older.
She’s beautiful, but her kind eyes expose her exhaustion. The dark rings circling her eyes remind me of what Valentina said at the clinic. She was there because she wanted to help her mother.
And that’s when it hits. I can’t rest yet. Injustices still need to be corrected.
Plans flood my head as I put on my socks and shoes. While most revolve around Valentina, a few are for my own benefit. I won’t let someone like Valeria Giuffrida write my story, and I also won’t let her depict Valentina as the antagonist in it.
When I step into the hallway outside my room, the resolve in my chest burns brightly. Tonight, I’ll set things straight, and I won’t even need my gun. Yet.